UCSF Archives & Special Collections awarded grant to digitize historical California public health materials

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UCSF Archives has been awarded a California Revealed grant to digitize historical reports, newspapers, yearbooks, and other publications that document the development of medicine and public health in California and the Bay Area and various activist and community roles in that history. The publications to be digitized include The Cap & Seal yearbook of the San Francisco General Hospital Nursing School, the Annual Reports of the San Francisco Nursery for Homeless Children, the Annual Reports of St. Mary’s Hospital, the Bay Area Health Liberation News Newspaper, the Annual Reports of the California Women’s Hospital, the Clarion journal of the SF Department of Public Health Tuberculosis division, and the Annual Reports of St. Luke’s Hospital.

These materials contain fascinating and valuable primary source documentation of the development of medicine and public health in California. Included are countless historical images of hospital spaces, technologies, and equipment; historical data on hospital patients, surgeries, and finances; historical patient voices through writings and illustrations; and evidence of the broad and diverse movement building which was a part of progressive public health development in the civil rights era.

The project will include 80 total volumes of the items outlined above. Having the digitization provided for free by California Revealed is equivalent to an estimated $5500 of actual digitization costs. The digitized materials will be published to Calisphere for public access and download.

The front page of the Bay Area Health Liberation News newspaper with an article about medical repression in prisons.

About California Revealed:
California Revealed is a State Library initiative to help California’s public libraries, in partnership with other local heritage groups, digitize, preserve, and provide online access to archival materials – books, newspapers, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and more – that tell the incredible stories of the Golden State.

Surviving and Thriving: A new exhibit at ZSFG

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By Griffin Burgess

Announcing a new exhibit at ZSFG!

From January 28th to March 9th, the National Libraries of Medicine’s traveling exhibit, Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture will be on display in the lobby of the main hospital (Building 25) at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

The exhibit is only available for six weeks, so be sure to visit as soon as you can!

From NLM:

The exhibition explores the rise of AIDS in the early 1980’s and the evolving response to the epidemic over the last 30 years.

The title Surviving and Thriving comes from a book written in 1987 by and for people with AIDS that insisted people could live with AIDS, not just die from it. Jennifer Brier, the exhibition curator, explains that “centering the experience of people with AIDS in the exhibition allows us to see how critical they were, and continue to be, in the political and medical fight against HIV/AIDS.”

Protestors in front of the James A. Shannon Building, National Institutes of Health, 1990 Courtesy Donna Binder
Protestors in front of the James A. Shannon Building, National Institutes of Health, 1990 Courtesy Donna Binder

Surviving and Thriving presents their stories alongside those of others involved in the national AIDS crisis. The six-banner traveling exhibition utilizes a variety of historic photographs as well as images of pamphlets and publications to illustrate how a group of people responded to, or failed to respond, to HIV/AIDS.

Robert C. Gallo, M.D. at the National Institutes of Health, early 1980’s . Courtesy National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
Robert C. Gallo, M.D. at the National Institutes of Health, early 1980’s. Courtesy National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

This exhibition was produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health and curated by Jennifer Brier, PhD, University of Illinois.


New Internship Posting: Digitization and Metadata Intern

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We’re recruiting for a Digitization and Metadata Intern! If you’re currently or recently enrolled in an LIS (or other) program and are interested in working on some of our super cool digitization, web-archiving, and metadata creation projects we want to hear from you!

The Digitization and Metadata Intern may work any any number of projects, but some of the possibilities we’re most excited about are:

  • Creating and cleaning metadata for our project to digitize the stunning set of drawings, paintings, sketches, and photos in the Ralph Sweet Collection of Medical Illustrations.
  • Helping to coordinate and carry out capture of UCSF websites as part of our ongoing effort to overhaul our extensive UCSF web-archives collection.
  • Assisting with metadata clean up efforts in collaboration with represented community groups, such as with the Black Caucus records.
  • Scanning and digitizing historical documents and images requested by our patrons.

Read more about this internship and apply: here. We’re excited to share this work with someone and give prospective candidates opportunity to learn about medical archives.

Type-written text of an index to a collection of medical illustrations.

Happy Holidays (and 2018/19 Winter Closure)

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Photo by Elisabeth Fall

The archives team would like to express our gratitude to all our supporters, donors, users, collaborators, interns and colleagues for helping us grow our holdings, uncover, describe, and digitize previously hidden collections.

We hope to see many of you next year, please join us for the upcoming Archives Lectures and come view the recently opened new exhibit, Open Wide: 500 Years of Dentistry in Art.

The Archives & Special Collections will be closed from Saturday, December 22, 2017 through Tuesday, January 1st, 2018. We will reopen on Wednesday, January 2nd.

Best wishes for a wonderful New Year!

What came before Zero? STIs Among Men Who Had Sex with Men in California, 1945-1965 | ARCHIVES TALK

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Thursday, January 10, 2019, 12 – 1:15 pm
Parnassus Library, 5th Floor, Lange Room

ATTEND the Talk >

Expanding on one thread from his recent book, Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), Richard A. McKay, D.Phil. will present findings from his archival research across North America to illuminate historical aspects of sexual health and sexually transmitted infections among men who had sex with men. The talk will focus on California in the 1950s and 1960s, with a particular emphasis on developments in homophile activism—the forerunner of later gay rights organizing—and public health. Dr. McKay will also reflect on the methodological challenges of carrying out research on a topic for which patient records and other source materials were routinely destroyed to preserve confidentiality.

Dr. Richard A. McKay, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge

Dr. Richard A. McKay, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

download event flyer

download event flyer

 

Lest We Forget: Slavery, Race, and The Birth of American Gynecology | ARCHIVES TALK

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MONDAY DEC 10, 12 – 1:15 PM
5TH FLOOR, LANGE ROOM,
PARNASSUS LIBRARY

Join Associate Professor of History, Deirdre Cooper Owens as she explains how the institution of American slavery was directly linked to the creation of reproductive medicine in the U.S. She will provide context for how and why physicians denied black women their full humanity, yet valued them as “medical superbodies” highly suited for experimentation. Engaging with 19th-century ideas about so-called racial difference, Cooper Owens will shed light on the contemporary legacy of medical racism.

Go beyond the Archives Talk with a Master Class led by Associate Professor of History, Deirdre Cooper Owens. Space is limited, REGISTER HERE.

Deirdre Cooper Owens, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY in Queens, New York and an Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lecturer

Deirdre Cooper Owens, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY in Queens, New York and an Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lecturer

download event flyer

download event flyer

 

New Archives Assistant: Xavier Macy

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We are happy to introduce our new archives assistant, Xavier Macy who will be helping with diverse archival projects in the next few months.

Xavier is currently working on his PhD in African American History and the History of Science, Technology, Environment and Health at Rutgers University. He holds a Master’s Degree in American History with a concentration of the Civil Rights Movement, from James Madison University and has dedicated his academic career to understanding issues of race throughout American History.

Previously Xavier headed the creation of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Carpool Database, authored multiple entries for the Encyclopedia of Jim Crow, worked with the Institute of Visual Studies on numerous exhibits focusing on issues of race, gentrification, and urban renewal, and gave numerous papers at various academic conferences, the most recent being given at the Society for the History of Technology held in St. Louis, Missouri. He also has a significant amount of experience utilizing archives for his own historical research.

Xavier was born at UCSF and is a native of San Francisco and Pacifica, having taught throughout the Bay Area including heading a critical thinking program at San Mateo County Jail. He currently lives with his fiancé in Pacifica.

Announcing the UCSF Food Industry Documents Archive

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Image of a grocery store aisle with packaged foods.

The UCSF Archives and Special Collections and Industry Documents Library (IDL) are pleased to announce the launch of the Food Industry Documents Archive, a brand new collection of over 30,000 documents related to the food industry and its impact on public health. These documents, available online for the first time, highlight marketing, research, and policy strategies used by food companies and trade groups, and reveal the communications and connections between industry, academic, and regulatory organizations.

The Food Industry Documents Archive was created in collaboration with the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and officially unveiled during the inaugural symposium on November 15, 2018. A full recording of the symposium can be viewed here.

The Food Industry Documents were digitized and made available online through partnerships with other libraries, archives, and related organizations, bringing together historical and contemporary materials to support inquiry into long-standing industry practices.

Topics include the Sugar Research Foundation, the International Sugar Research Foundation, the Sugar Institute, cane sugar and beet sugar production, sugar-sweetened beverages, sugared snack foods advertised to children, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the National Research Council and Food and Nutrition Board.

These documents have been used as the source for a number of publications including:

The Food Industry Documents Archive collection joins the existing Tobacco, Drug, and Chemical Industry Documents collections, allowing users to search across industries and identify common tactics used to sway scientific research, shape public opinion, and influence policies and regulations meant to protect public health.

Read the full announcement and be sure to visit the UCSF Industry Documents Library to view the new Food Industry Documents collections.

Celebrating 20 Years of the UCSF Tobacco Center and Industry Documents Library

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Celebrate with us >

Image of tobacco company executives testifying before congress with the following text over the top: Celebrating 20 years of the UCSF Tobacco Center and Industry Documents Library

Tuesday, November 27, 12 – 1 pm

Parnassus Library, 5th Floor, Lange Room: Join us to celebrate 20 years since the signing of the Master Settlement Agreement and the creation of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and the UCSF Industry Documents Library!

In November 1998 the 5 largest cigarette manufacturers signed the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with 46 U.S. states and 6 U.S. jurisdictions. This was the largest civil litigation settlement in U.S. history.

The MSA imposed restrictions on the sale and marketing of cigarettes, especially to youth, and required hundreds of billions of dollar in payments to the states in perpetuity to partially compensate them for the Medicaid costs smoking causes. It also created the American Legacy Foundation (now known as the Truth Initiative) which funded the creation of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and the Industry Documents Library.

This event is open to the public. Cake and beverages will be provided while supply lasts. RSVP using the link at the top of the post. 

This event is co-organized by the UCSF Industry Documents Library and the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.